Sonos laid off about 100 employees on Wednesday. according to The Verge. Employees of the company’s marketing department allegedly bore the brunt of the blow. The cuts come as Sonos simultaneously tries to sell to the public new Ace headphones and fix the rebuilt Sonos mobile appCEO Patrick Spence admitted that it was a result of his push for growth.
The company confirmed the layoffs The Verge. “We have made the difficult decision to say goodbye to approximately 100 team members, representing 6 percent of the company,” Spence said. The company is also reportedly “laying off” some of its customer support offices, including one in Amsterdam that is slated to close later this year. Sonos’ LinkedIn page reports 1,800 employees worldwide, and the six percent figure in the statement is about 1,650 employees. In June 2023, the company’s recent layoffs fell seven percent of the workforce.
Although Review by Engadget was impressed with the company’s new Ace headphones, with app complaints overshadowing the long-awaited hardware launch. It is designed to address “performance and reliability issues” and rebuild the developer platform with “modern programming languages that will allow you to manage more innovations faster.” launching the program has failed. This created headaches for the company’s most loyal customers and threatened to drag the brand down as it pushed into new product categories. It even led delay of two new products they were ready to roll the other way.
The new Sonos app for Android, iOS and desktop launched in May without key features like sleep timers and alarms. Customers have reported problems rearranging speakers in different rooms, some only working intermittently, and problems performing other basic tasks. Others said that they often failed to download the software even on the first try.
To find out how broken the app is, Spence a timeline to repair in a blog post late last month. July and August were dedicated to improving stability while adding new products and making Music Library improvements. The August and September window is dedicated to improving volume responsiveness, user interface, stability and bug management. September and October will include fixes for consistency and reliability of alarms, edit playlists, and queue recovery. Improvements in settings will also be touched upon. (Phew!)
Today’s announcement was mixed on the company’s Reddit communityfrom the day it was put into use, which sounded about the problems of the application. Some saw the layoffs announced today as targeting 100 employees, suggesting that someone high-profile was doing the trick. “I have to say that I didn’t have both feet in the door to fire Patrick Spence, but any CEO who leaves his employees out to dry and then signs the paper firing them is a bad thing.” u/teryan2006 he wrote.
“One of the things I’ve emphasized since I took over as CEO has been the need for Sonos to move faster,” Spence said on an earnings call in July. “This is what led to my promise to introduce at least two new products every year – we have successfully fulfilled this promise. And with the app, my drive for speed backfired.”
